Offence of Fraudulently Receiving Programmes

Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 s. 297

As amended by Copyright, etc. and Trade Marks (Offences and Enforcement) Act 2002

S.297

(1) A person who dishonestly receives a programme included in a broadcasting or cable programme service provided from a place in the United Kingdom with intent to avoid payment of any charge applicable to the reception of the programme commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale.

(2) Where an offence under this section committed by a body corporate is proved to have been committed with the consent or connivance of a director, manager, secretary or other similar officer of the body, or a person purporting to act in any such capacity, he as well as the body corporate is guilty of the offence and liable to be proceeded against and punished accordingly.

In relation to a body corporate whose affairs are managed by its members "director" means a member of the body corporate.

297A. UNAUTHORISED DECODERS

(1) A person commits an offence if he -

(a) makes, imports, distributes, sells or lets for hire or offers or exposes for sale or hire any unauthorised decoder;

(b) has in his possession for commercial purposes any unauthorised decoder;

(c) installs, maintains or replaces for commercial purposes any unauthorised decoder; or

(d) advertises any unauthorised decoder for sale or hire or otherwise promotes any unauthorised decoder by means of commercial communications.

(2) A person guilty of an offence under subsection (1) is liable -

(a) on summary conviction, to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum;

(b) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years, or to a fine, or to both.

(3) It is a defence to any prosecution for an offence under this section for the defendant to prove that he did not know, and had no reasonable ground for believing, that the decoder was an unauthorised decoder.

(4) In this section

"apparatus"........................includes any device, component or electronic data;

"conditional access technology"......means any technical measure or arrangement whereby access to encrypted transmissions in an intelligible form is made conditional on prior individual authorisation;

"decoder" ..........................means any apparatus which is designed or adapted to enable (whether on its own or with any other apparatus) an encrypted transmission to be decoded;

"encrypted"........................includes subjected to scrambling or the operation of cryptographic envelopes, electronic locks, passwords or any other analogous

application;

"transmission".....................means: (a) any programme included in a broadcasting or cable programme service which is provided from a place in the United Kingdom; or (b) an information society service (within the meaning of Directive 98/34/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22^nd June 1998, as amended by Directive 98/48/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20^th July 1998) which is provided from a place in the United Kingdom or any other member State; and

"unauthorised".....................in relation to a decoder, means that the decoder is designed or adapted to enable an encrypted transmission, or any service of which it forms part, to be accessed in an intelligible form without payment of the fee (however imposed) which the person making the transmission, or on whose behalf it is made, charges for accessing the transmission or service (whether by the circumvention of any conditional access technology related to the transmission or service or by any other means).